Fragile
by MarvelGeek
Summary: Clinton F. Barton was three years old when he was diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type 1. Also known as Brittle Bone Disease. But he's not fragile. He may get more broken bones than other people and he might have slightly bowed legs, but Clint Barton is not fragile. But he doesn't tell his team anyway. (Prologue is a little short, chapters will be much longer.)
1. Chapter 1

Clinton F. Barton was learning to walk when his parents noticed that there was something wrong with his legs. They looked funny, his feet would point inwards and his legs themselves looked...well..'bent'.

They took him to the doctor and they were told that Clint had bowed legs and would need to wear metal leg braces for the rest of his life, to make sure his legs would get straighter and that they wouldn't bow further. Nobody could tell them why though. Nobody knew. At least not until he was three years old. When Clint was three he had his first break and it was a bad one.

He and his older brother Barney, who was nine at the time, were playing on the playground. They were having so much fun, it was only when Clint decided he wanted to jump off the sand box like he could fly that things turned for the worse.

He'd jumped and then fallen on his elbow. But nobody had thought he would get hurt, it was only a few inches off the ground after all and it was padded, no normal child would've gotten hurt. But Clint wasn't normal. It was the resonating 'crack' of his arm breaking in three places that assured them of that.

It wasn't just the break that was chilling to his parents, it was the fact that he just sat there silently, not crying and eyes wide, so wide that for the first time in his short life, his parents could see that the whites of his eyes were not white but slightly tinted blue.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type 1...Brittle bone disease. That's what Clint had, that was the reason his legs were bowed, that his eyes were tinted blue, that on a playground toy where normal kids would barely get a scrape, that he broke his arm in three separate ways. Clint was fragile and horribly so.

It was after Clint's diagnosis that his father started drinking like a mad man, blaming himself and his faulty genes. Yet soon he discovered that it wasn't his genes that caused Clint's disease...it was his wife's.

Her uncle had had OI type 2 and died in the womb. It was her that gave Clint a disease. It was her who broke his son! His youngest son! There was a crash a few weeks later...their father had been drinking and he wrapped his car around a tree. Their mother had been on the passenger side, she was killed on impact and their father slipped into a coma and died three days later.

Both Clint and Barney were placed in the care of an orphanage. An orphanage that both children escaped from, when Clint was eleven and Barney was sixteen. The boys joined the circus and worked as set-up guys for four years, that was until Barney went under the tutelage of the world's best archer and Clint under that of the resident clown. It was during those years that Clint was the most happy, he had always loved to make people laugh and now he could.

But when Clint was seventeen, Barney betrayed him. He stole all of the money that Clint had been saving up and then he burned down the big-top...with all of their friends still inside.

Clint had still been wearing his clown makeup when Barney beat him senseless. His eye swelling closed and his mouth bleeding and mixing with the red face-paint already surrounding it. It was raining when Clint finally staggered up and out of the tent that he and Barney had once called home, Barney's old bow clutched in hand.

Clint was eighteen when he joined SHIELD and the rest is history.


	2. Chapter 2

Ch2 new

Clint sighed as he yanked off the straps on the legs of his suit. He hated those straps, he hated the fact that he relied on them to make sure his braces stayed on correctly. Natasha knew about his disorder, she knew that he had to constantly wear braces to stand upright and to make sure that his already bowed legs didn't bend any further. She had been the one to bully SHIELD into making him a special kind of braces, thin ones that he could hide under the legs of his costume. But that also made the stupid straps necessary. He honestly had no idea why his teammates hadn't realized what the straps on his costume legs were for. But they hadn't, they were oblivious.

50 breaks. He thought ruefully as he leaned back on his bed. 50 breaks in his entire lifetime, mostly during childhood. He broke his right arm 7 times, his left 12, his right leg 5 and his left leg 2, the rest of his breaks were fingers, toes, ribs, his wrists. Yet he was still in one piece, surprising even to him. He's fragile. There's the word he hates again..Fragile. Glass is fragile, paper is fragile, Clint Barton is NOT fragile. If only people could learn to see that.

He gently slipped the thin braces off his legs and replaced them with his normal braces. The ones that could actual support him with out the aid of obvious straps. The downside was that they looked like real braces, metal and all. He usually just wore a pair of baggy sweatpants to cover them. Clint smiled as he thought of how many times his team could've found out about his condition if they'd just known where to look.

Every mission they went on, Clint always got hurt. But he would always avoid Medical if no one else was going and just swing by the ER instead. Nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary with their archer, except Natasha but she didn't count. He really dreaded telling the team, one of them might turn out to be the horribly overprotective friend that would try to stick him in a bubble with a sign on it saying. 'No touching! May break!'

Even Barney had tried that once, he'd picked up the toddler Clint and put him in a cardboard box labelled 'Fragile! Handle with care.' Then proceeded to carry his little brother around in it for two weeks, their mother had thought it was adorable, Clint thought it was annoying.

He used to hate being at the orphanage with all the other kids, they used to call him 'Mr. Glass' or 'The Broken Boy' and would chase him around to see how fast he could run with his metal legs. Back then, braces weren't as good as they are now. Now you don't even notice that people are wearing leg braces, but before...that was all that people saw.

_He had climbed a tree once, to try and and get this other kid down. The older boy was utterly petrified of heights, and he was clinging to the trunk with all his might. He was one of the kids that had made fun of Clint, his name was Willie Hemlock and Clint had never seen him look so scared in his life. So while everyone was laughing at the kid, Clint climbed up the tree, moving to sit next to Willie. _

_"M-Mr. Glass? W-What're you doing up here?" _

_Willie had stammered and Clint had rested a hand on his shoulder, reassuring the frightened boy that he was here to help, not to harm. Clint ended up guiding the kid down, only to try and climb down himself. That's when his left leg brace got caught on a branch, Clint had yelped and let go of the tree, leaving himself dangling there, only his stuck leg brace holding him up. Then the metal of the brace snapped and Clint plummeted down, the only sounds permeating the air were the sounds of bones breaking and Clint's agonizing cry of pain. _

_"CLINT!"_

_"Hurry, some go get his brother!"_

_Clint broke four ribs that day and got a bad concussion. But he also gained a best friend in Willie Hemlock. They were absolute best friends until the day Willie died of Diphtheria when Clint was ten and he was twelve. The orphanage they were in, hadn't bothered vaccinating any of them and without purified water, it wasn't uncommon for them to get Diphtheria. Willie was one of the worst cases there were, Clint and Barney both got sick as well and both recovered. Willie did not. _

_Clint remembering sleeping in the same cot as Willie when they were both sick, Willie had insisted on Clint staying with him and after a while it became apparent that Willie wasn't getting any better, but Clint was. On Willie's last night, he talked and talked to Clint in his raspy voice about things they were going to do once he got better. But they didn't do anything because when Clint woke up the next morning, his best friend in the entire world was gone. _

_The orphanage hadn't bothered to bury him, afraid to touch him, in case the disease was still inside of him. So Clint took a flat stone and used Willie's pocketknife to carve the words. _

_'William Joseph Hemlock_

_The best friend I ever had'_

_Then instead of burying the body he didn't have, he buried Willie's pocketknife_. Clint gently pushed himself off his bed and into a standing position. He stumbled slightly before getting his bearings and walking towards the door and into the elevator. He hated taking the stairs...for obvious reasons. The stairs in the Tower were steep and there weren't any railings on the sides. It was like an OI minefield.

Clint got out at the living room and kitchen floor, hoping that he hadn't mixed breakfast. When he walked into the kitchen, he was relieved when the table was full of Avengers eating assorted breakfast foods, the archer plopped down next to Steve and grabbed a bowl of oatmeal someone had left out for him. It had brown sugar on it, just like he liked it. Must've been Natasha, he reasoned.

"Morning Legolas!"

Tony sighed as he sipped at his morning coffee, which was probably the only reason at that he was conscious. Clint grunted in response, while shoving a spoonful of warm oatmeal into his mouth. Bruce shuffled over to the table, carrying several cups of coffee, one for all of them. Clint took his coffee gratefully, sipping at it calmly. That was when Bruce's glasses, he had been wiping them on the hem of his shirt, slipped from the physicist's grip.

In retrospect, Clint realized that he shouldn't have tried to catch them. There were several other Avengers sitting around the table that could've caught them. But still in reflex he lunged to catch them..with the opposite arm. Steve went to catch them as we'll, but actually caught them. Clint bit his lip as a snapping sound echoed through the room. Clint gasped as he clutched at his arm.

Clavicle...yep, that was his clavicle. He'd broken that twice before. Natasha was instantly crouching in front of him, her hands on his knees.

"Clint are you okay? What was it this time?"


	3. Chapter 3

Clint bit his lip harshly, dammit it _hurt_! He couldn't bring himself to look at Natasha, his eyes were watering from the pain and he didn't want her or any of the others to see the wetness pooling in his eyes. It was definitely a full through fracture, those hurt the most. Clavicle breaks were always tricky.

"Collarbone."

Clint hissed softly, blood dripping from his mouth, more specifically from his lip, he'd bitten hard enough to draw blood. Natasha cursed fluently in Russian under her breath as he extended a hand to pull him to his feet, they would have to go to the ER for this break. Clint nodded and let Natasha yank him gently to his feet. The rest of the Avengers just gaped at them until Tony found his voice.

"What the fuck is going on?!"

Tony asked, looking at the pained look on Clint's face and the concerned look on Natasha's. Natasha opened her mouth to say something but Clint glared at her to shut up. She just ignored him and motioned for Bruce to come over.

"Clint has OI."

Natasha explained, rolling her eyes at Clint as she said so. The archer was staring daggers of anger at her. Awareness dawned in Bruce's dark brown eyes and he hurried over instantly. Steve, Thor and Tony just looked confused though, Tony was the only one who felt like voicing his confusion however. But it was drowned out by Bruce's surprised gasp.

"Osetogenesis Imperfecta? What Type? Did you get a break?!"

Bruce whispered as he looked Clint over, gently. The pale archer just glared at him, clutching his shoulder and arm to his chest like it was his lifeline. As an answer to Bruce's question, Clint raised a single eyebrow, as if to say 'Why-else-would-I-be-holding-my-arm-like-this?'.

"Type 1, borderline severe. Yep..it's a clavicle break."

Clint sighed softly, and Bruce's eyes widened. He whipped his head around frantically, as if looking for something. He found it on Tony, his oversized MIT sweatshirt. He motioned for Tony to take it off.

"We need to use it to splint his shoulder."

Bruce added, as a way of explanation. Tony raised an eyebrow but he didn't question it, just by looking at the sweaty, pale archer, he could tell that Clint needed it more than him, much more. Bruce asked Clint if he could walk and the archer nodded, but when he tried, his legs were noodle-like and wobbly. If it weren't for his braces holding him upright, he probably would've fallen and broken something else. Yet Clint persisted, if it weren't for the arm that curled around his waist and scooped him up and off the ground, he probably would've passed out. Steve had been the one to pick him up, and most of the Avengers looked at him in concern and worry.

"What is the oseteothingie have to do with this?!"

Tony asked, looking at Natasha for an explanation and she was more than happy to provide it. She looked at him solemnly when he said it.

"It means that he has Brittle bone disease."

-TimeSkip-

They ended up waiting in the waiting room of the ER for a while, mornings were always the worst time to go. There weren't enough doctors or nurses to go around, so they had to wait a while before Clint could be taken care of. The archer lay propped up against Steve in the uncomfortable hospital issue chairs, he was still sweaty and pale as he hugged his arm to his chest.

Steve was getting angrier and angrier at the fact that the medical staff wasn't helping their friend who was in obvious pain. He was tempted to go over there and demand that Clint be seen, now. But it was as if the archer had read Steve's mind because he sent the super soldier a look that clearly said for him not too. Yet two hours later, when Clint was almost definitely going to pass out, Steve leaned over and grabbed Tony's upper arm. Getting the genius' attention and shooting him a knowing look.

"Tony, I don't care what you do, cause a scene if you need too. Just get him seen."

Steve hissed and Tony sent him a sly smile with a conniving look on his face.

"You got it, Cap."

Throwing a scene is almost what ends up happening, as all the staff members Tony tries to reason with are pathologically unhelpful, repeating on monotone that Clint will be fine and will just have to tough it out.

"Look, you idiots! He has a chronic bone condition! He has just broken his collarbone and is about to pass out! Give him something, at least look at him!"

Tony cried and the nurses just rolled their eyes and responded flatly, just like they did over and over.

"We can't give patients anything until a doctor sees them sir. Otherwise we'd get people who just come in to get high."

Tony was ready to yank his hair out by the roots, why couldn't these people understand that he was trying to get their help?! Finally he thought of an idea, he just hoped that Clint wouldn't just kill him afterwards. He did not appreciate the thought of getting hung in his sleep.

"Please! He's my little brother! I hate seeing him in so much pain, just look at him."

Tony whimpered, softly and one grandmotherly looking nurse looks at them, and then at Clint in concern. He can almost hear her icy demeanor melting at the horribly pitiful sight.

"I'll see what I can do."

She whispered, tentatively.

-TimeSkip-

"No! I'm not wearing it!"

Clint growled, looking at the offending article of clothing with a sneer. The offending clothing is a hospital gown in Clint's size, a blue tinted hospital gown covered in multicolored bears. It was obliviously aimed at a much younger patient than Clint and Tony couldn't stop laughing, behind his hand of course.

Not long after Tony went all 'scary big brother' on the hospital staff, Clint found himself curled up on a stretcher in the middle of the ER hallway. They still didn't have any rooms available for non-life threatening cases, but Tony somehow managed to convince them to start treating him anyway. At the moment 'treatment' just involved a child's dose of Tylenol, a Barney themed ice pack and the accursed hospital gown.

But the pain really was excruciating, yet it wasn't something Clint hadn't experienced before. He was used to such pain. But then again, it was slowly reaching that level that even he couldn't handle. A fresh stab of sharp pain came from his collarbone and he couldn't help but let out an involuntary whimper.

Finally he consented and slowly changed into the gown, once he was dressed and situated, The Avengers' eyes widened as they looked at their archer. He looked like a child sitting on the gurney, dressed in a childish hospital gown. Steve felt a pang of sympathy for the archer, he just looked so helpless that it tugged on the heart strings. Clint looked up in surprise as the nurse from earlier hurried back.

"You're in luck! I found a doctor who knows a lot about Brittle bone disease. He gave me permission to give you some intravenous bisphosphonates."

The nurse explained and Clint nodded dizzily, leaning back onto the pillow behind his head. He honestly felt like he was about to vomit.


End file.
